'He thrust towards me': Ex-PC speaks out on terrifying harassment from her Met colleagues

A former female Met Police officer claims a sergeant “pretended to unzip his flies” and “thrust towards” her in a public work environment when she was a new recruit. The ex-PC is speaking out after the monster PC David Carrick, one of Britain’s most prolific rapists, was unmasked as a serving elite Met unit officer last week. She told Express.co.uk: “I was the only woman. They made me feel really uncomfortable.”

Emma (not her real name) told Express.co.uk about four shocking factors that contributed to her resignation:

• She was sexually propositioned as a joke in front of another male colleague.
  
  
• Another “creepy” police constable bombarded her with social media messages for “weeks and weeks” before she found out he had fathered a child with a separate female officer.
  
  
• She felt she was unable to report the harassment at the time for fear of being “shunned” or dubbed a “grass”.
  
  
• Male officers did not take sexual assault allegations from a female victim at a crime scene seriously and appeared frustrated when she tried to investigate them.

The ex-PC, who was part of the force’s flagship graduate scheme, “Police Now”, spoke of a “completely male-dominated environment” and being “really keen to fit in” during her first days as a 22-year-old probationary police constable.

In an office room with another male colleague in her first weeks in the Met, she said she asked the sergeant for a favour.

She went on to claim “he spun around on his chair, pretended to unzip his flies, put his hands on his hips and thrust towards me and said, ‘What can I do for you?’”

She added: “The most frustrating thing about that incident is how it stayed with me because I did not do anything about it. I have got this slight guilt.”

Asked why she did not report it at the time, she said there was a culture of staying silent for fear of reprisals.

She said: “Everybody knows when somebody has made a complaint. I would have been shunned. I would be gossiped about or called a grass.

“When I did think about reporting it, and this is the problem, internally and with all policing culture, there was not really any anonymous reporting.

“If I had reported this, as the only woman in the team, it would have been crystal clear it was me. And I would never ever have done that to my reputation. It was not worth it.”

It comes as new misconduct figures released by the Home Office and analysed by Express.co.uk show almost 50,000 complaints were filed against police officers in England and Wales in the year to March 2022, with the Met being the worse offender registering more complaints than any other service (6,303) during the year to March 31.

The Met told Express.co.uk it has since established a “dedicated Reporter of Wrongdoing Team to support anyone through this process”.

A spokesman said: “We urge anyone who has concerns of misconduct or wrongdoing within the Met to raise these concerns; this can be done anonymously. Any allegations will be thoroughly investigated.

“The Met will always support any officer or member of police staff when they raise concerns. The Met does not tolerate anyone being victimised because they have the courage to speak out.”

The ex-police officer also referred to what she described as a “boys' club” in a “nepotistic environment” where getting the best jobs was not necessarily about “whether you are the best candidate”.

In response, a Met spokesman said: “There are policies in place to ensure our recruitment processes are fair and transparent. We continue to develop our recruitment processes to ensure they are efficient and fair to ensure we recruit the best of the best for London.”

She also claimed another male police constable, known to his colleagues as a “proper weirdo”, had “pestered” her with social media messages before she found out he had fathered the child of a separate female officer.

She said: “When it came out among the team, I realised it wasn't just me. He had a reputation for this. There are loads of them. There are examples of that on almost every team.

“There are not enough women in policing, and that is making it an issue. It is a boys club, for sure.”

In a separate claim, the ex-PC detailed being the only woman officer to arrive on the scene of a brawl outside a concert venue, which was originally being treated as an affray, to find a woman there had been sexually assaulted by a man while queuing.

She said: “The most frustrating part for me was it was suddenly clear to me, this was not an affray. This was a sexual assault. And the way that we have to deal with an affray or a fight is very different.

“It shows how important it is to have a decent female representation in policing because of the way we think. We think differently we have different experiences.”

The ex-officer went on to suggest that her attempt to investigate the assault was not taken seriously by her superiors who were “p***ed off” she had raised it.

She said: “Everybody just completely ignored the fact that this girl just had a random stranger shove his hand up her skirt, and try and touch her, nobody seemed to be hearing that.

“And I say to my superiors, has anybody spoken to the victim, and I can see him, already uncomfortable that I've used the phrase, ‘victim’, because if there's a victim, this whole thing needs to be dealt with differently.

“He was so p***ed off with me that I handled that way, and that I had created work for everybody.”

Asked about the ex-PC’s claims of victims of sexual assault not being taken seriously by officers, a Met spokesman said: “Anyone who is a victim is encouraged to engage with police – there are of course scenarios where some people opt not to do that, for whatever reason, which makes things much more difficult in terms of action that can be taken.

“The Met takes all allegations of sexual assault extremely seriously. Victims are encouraged to report the matter to the police so action can be taken and the incident thoroughly investigated.”